As the years of high school progressed and I got older, my pregame ritual evolved into a more refined and studied practice. Over that time, I spent hundreds of hours buried in my iTunes library to correct and add track listings, album names and release dates, disc numbers, track numbers, and any other tidbit of information I felt relevant at the time. This eventually crossed over to my iPod (affectionately known as my iPid) where I crafted playlists that stretched for hours and hours. I created one specifically for that pregame ritual that easily took a dozen or more hours before I got it to a point that felt right.
Every song’s position related to the songs before and the ones to come afterwards to craft a deliberate mental journey with deliberate and intentioned rises and falls in crescendos. The songs did not just jive together in terms of tonal qualities, but instead relied upon lyrical and narrative progressions, epistemological and ontological frames of mind, temporal and contemporaneous shifts that both brought me out of and back into my physical presence. Pacing played a critical and crucial role in getting me mentally prepared and situated to embark on the journey to face the trenches of the face-to-face battle of will, perseverance, determination, fortitude, and heart. I worked to craft a musical adventure that took me out of the day-to-day dramas and realities of high school in the mid 2000’s. I, instead, chose to reach into the ether to find a center in myself that rose above the trivialities.
